The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall
By: Katie Alender
Maybe the “something” didn’t mean facts or an idea. Maybe she meant she had an actual thing to share—another letter. What if the one Janie had found was just an introduction, and the real information was someplace else?
I opened each desk drawer, pushing the trinkets and office supplies out of the way. I was sure I would find something. Aunt Cordelia had planned for this. Something may have gone wrong at the end, but she’d been planning it for a long time. No way would she have left the most important element to chance.
“What are you looking for?”
The voice, low and garbled, practically gave me a heart attack. I turned to see Maria standing just on the other side of the salt line.
“How long have you been there?” I snapped.
“Long enough to know that you’re looking for something,” she growled.
“I’m looking for something my aunt wanted me to have,” I said. I wasn’t about to give her any specifics, for fear that she knew where the letter was and might go back and destroy it.
Maria’s eyes traveled over the newspaper-covered walls. It was almost physically painful to look at her disfigured face and ruined body. Instead of focusing on her monstrous flaws, I forced myself to look beneath them for the shape that used to be a little girl.
“She came in here every day,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
“But then she stopped.”
“She died,” I said.
“Yes, I know.” Maria looked me straight in the eye. “I helped her.”
I blinked. “You what?”
Her beady eyes were fixed on me, fearless. “She was sick and hurt and getting worse. She was frightened of what she might do.”
“What did she think she might do?”
“She didn’t know,” Maria said. “The house nearly got her, in the end. There were smoke beasts everywhere. She was scared and sad. So I helped.”
“But she killed herself,” I said. “Do you mean you helped her kill herself?”
Maria tilted her head. “Not exactly. I told her that if she left, she could die and be free.”
I was only a foot away from Maria now, with the wall of salt between us. Anger and disbelief throbbed inside me as I stared down at her oozing skin, her thick-scarred eyelids. But behind the horror show of her face, something in her eyes was surprisingly intelligent and human.
“That’s impossible. How could you have told her? We can’t tell living people anything,” I said, a razor edge in my voice.
My intensity caused Maria to take a step back. Her eyes darted around the room, refusing to meet mine. “She was nice to me,” she said. “She knew I came in here. She called me her little friend. She had pretty pictures for me to look at. She would set them down on the floor in the morning, and I would sit and look at them. And at the end of every day, she would cut one out so I could take it with me. I still have them all. I’m very careful with them. They’re my favorite things. And she gave me a blanket, because it’s so cold here. I—I’m still cold, but I like the blanket very much.”
I pictured Aunt Cordelia leaving small offerings for this poor, destroyed creature, speaking to her kindly, as if she were a normal little girl and not a beast.
And then I remembered something I’d seen years earlier—a cut-out picture of a box of cat food.
Was it possible I’d been wrong about Maria? That we were all wrong about Maria?
I lowered my voice and crouched down to her eye level. “How did you tell her what to do?”
Maria didn’t answer. She looked like she was afraid she’d be in trouble.
“If you did help her, then … thank you,” I said. “She didn’t want to die here.”
“I know!” Maria’s rotting chin jutted up toward me, hurt and defiant. “No one should die here. If you die here, you can never go home.”
“Do you want to go home?” I asked.
Our eyes met. Hers were disconcertingly honest, like any child’s. She nodded.
“Then maybe you can help me. I’m looking for something—my aunt used to write me letters. I think she wrote one, but never mailed it. I think it’s here somewhere.”
Maria’s ruined hands wrung the front of her dress. “I found her one day, when she was sick. I was a little scared of her, because that was when she was very bad. The smoke had gotten her, so she yelled and chased me … but I knew that wasn’t really her. Later, I heard her crying, so I came back. She was very weak, and she fell on the floor. The salt was broken, so I stayed here to chase the bad ghosts away from her, and then I went up to her, and I …” She lowered her hand, as if placing it across an imaginary forehead. “I told her, Shhh, don’t cry, it’s Maria, I will help you. I told her she had to leave, and not come back. Otherwise it would get her—the black fire.”
“What’s the black fire?” I asked.
Maria’s uneven eyebrows rose in surprise. “It’s the bad thing,” she said. “It lives here, and it holds on to us. It won’t let us go. If you try to leave, it will send something after you.”
Like … smoke?